Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It Read Free Page A

was devastated. Weeks later, grief-stricken, I found myself in a bookstore. I noticed a copy of
Eat Pray Love
, and I bought it. With a sense of urgency, I went home and read for two straight days. I realized why she had wanted to be the one to give me this book; she was giving me something I had always needed. I read the book a second time, and instead of hearing the author’s voice, I heard my mother’s. She encouraged me, she believed in me, and, at last, I didn’t feel like a black sheep. I wasn’t wrong for not wanting children. I wasn’t alone in my dreams of traveling. I wasn’t the only one who yearned to know God individually.
Eat Pray Love
woke me up. It gave me hope.
    This book not only spoke to my soul: it was my mother’s last and continual gift to me. Through it, she told me that she knew me, had always known me. That she loved me, and despite what we had been through and what was to come, I was free. The strings were cut. I could finally escape the claustrophobia of small-town life and live the way I wanted to. God had been there waiting, loving and accepting me, and I could choose to love and listen to Him in my own way.
    Eat Pray Love
showed me that wanderlust is a real and tangible thing. That I don’t have to be a mother, despite what society says. It showed me that a relationship could be anything I wanted. Most of all, it showed me that it was a beautiful thing to be myself; to love myself, to define my life any way I chose.
    Four years later, that book still means the world to me. I’m married, which surprised everyone—especially me. My husbandloves me for all my dramatic eccentricities. His wanderlust matches my own; we get restless if we’ve been home for more than three months without experiencing something new. He has ambitious personal goals, about which he remains steadfast. He and I currently have no plans for children, but we love our nieces and nephews (honorary and otherwise) with fervor. We define our marriage and our life as we want, encouraging each other to remain individuals, in constant devotion to who we are.
    Eat Pray Love
brought me through the darkest times of my life. It helped me grow in my relationship with God and taught me to be patient with myself. It made me feel that my mother is supporting me with enthusiasm and pride, enveloping me in her love. She used to say: “At the end of the day, it’s just you. So make sure you like the person you’re alone with.” Her words remind me to not only be honest with myself about where I am, so I can continue evolving as a person I do like to be alone with, but to be honest with my husband as well. I want to create the best marriage I can for us; we both deserve that.
    Thank you, Liz. You will never know the courage you gave me simply by giving it to yourself.

Happy Wife, Happy Life
    â€”
    Lisa Becker
    E
at Pray Love
made me reinvent my life. I was forty-one, a mother of two, stepmother of two and married to the love of my life when I read Liz Gilbert’s memoir. We lived in a beautiful house with an island in the kitchen, a pool in the backyard and roses growing through the white picket fence. After spending more than a decade on the road as a production supervisor in the film industry, and gallivanting around the globe in between projects, I was happy to be a settled-down, stay-at-home mom living my idyllic dream life. Or so I thought.
    I’d always felt that I wouldn’t be a complete woman if I didn’t birth a baby or two. Every palm, tarot and astrological reading I’d ever had showed two kids in my future. They didn’t come easy—I had three miscarriages before I had them—but I knew unequivocally that motherhood was my destiny. I just had no idea that it would be the hardest adjustment of my life. I was grateful that my hardworking husband earned a nice wage thatallowed me to stay home. Each morning the three of us stood in the doorway for